Something New

I thought that I would start something new here. I just got tired of the look of the old site...as tends to happen every 3 years or so. I remember changing the colors to look like a book I got for my thesis because I really liked the design...but now I need something other than green(s).

I've been thinking recently about what it means to be an evangelical. I can't find anybody with "straight" answer. So what do you think it is?

I tend to explain it in two ways:

[1] from the greek evangelion. It means good news. But it is also the word also means the gospel as in the writings about Jesus. I tend to see Jesus and the gospels as the hermeneutic 'lens' through which the rest of scripture is read if it is to be a Christian reading of scripture. As a result, this reading, and the tradition which follows it, is both the narrative tradition I am a part of and the one that I am also curious about. So the gospels and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the hermeneutic 'lens' through which I engage in questioning my world.

In this sense I am evangelical (adjective).

[2] A term used to explain a large group of predominantly conservative, non-mainline Christians. Evangelical Christianity has it's own culture and traditions, arguably it's own liturgy even though it might not be in a published form. (Notice how everyone knows when to stand and sit during a worship service and how familiar the order of the service is and you'll be witnessing something of an evangelical liturgy.) This is the culture out of which I was raised and from which I became disillusioned but never really left.

In this sense I am or used to be an evangelical (noun).

But what separates evangelical as a descriptor from being added to some catholics or even eastern orthodox practitioners? Why would some intellectual movements (such as radical orthodoxy) have such an aversion to the term?

I have my thoughts on the matter...but my church history is rusty so I'm eliciting the thoughts of others.

let the great experiment begin.